Herewith An Hiatus

Tilly Hatt called, all excited.

"I hear your going! Should be more fun than a barrel of monkeys."

"Not really," I replied. "How can two weeks of mental gymnastics be fun? This will be more like a mathematical root canal."

"Spoil sport," Tilly sniffed. "Just think of all those young Brits, the opportunities, the fact that there will be no escape. Fun, Simone, fun!"

What the good Matilda Hatt was referring to was an ultra secret meeting between the CIA, MI6 and a number of scientific specialists. The purpose? To make sense of the material obtained from the Libyan desert. The location? On a Trident nuclear submarine somewhere in the North Atlantic.

When Sir Harry wanted security, he didn't cut corners.

My invitation only came begrudgingly. My engineering degree is more mechanical than anything to do with nuclear fission or fusion, but I did have possession of one of the memory sticks that had been retrieved. Apparently the Professor was not as absent-minded as I had first thought. He had split the data into three, and hence my memory stick was at issue. Which meant that I was at issue.

Tilly informed me that her immediate superior was dead set against my attending. Tilly suspected that was because her immediate superior wasn't allowing her to go. Also, Tilly further mentioned that this woman, a political appointee, was a bit batty in the head. She knew this because the woman always referred to her breasts as "Abercrombie" and "Fitch."

I thought this overly twee, and for a fleeting moment wondered what I might call my own. Given a rather handsome return I had recently engineered with respect to sugar beet derivatives, I thought "Goldman" and "Sachs" might be appropriate. Then the fleeting moment thankfully fled.

The various secrecy oaths I have sworn forbids me to state just what will be under discussion. What I can tell you is that a new energy source is at issue, involving matter coming together with anti-matter. Hence the desert location. Apparently there was a small chance of creating a medium-sized black hole. Acceptable perhaps in a desert location, but not near any large urban area.

This little get-together is expected to last two weeks, during which time I will be incommunicado. But never fear -- I, like General MacArthur, will return. And given that science is the main topic under examination, I leave you with this, from Jacob Bronowski's The Common Sense of Science:

"Science is the acceptance of what works and the rejection of what does not. That needs more courage than we might think."

Discuss among yourselves.